Chapter 42
There’s a Jivanten word, trisouelle. It means a soul-shattering grief so profound it could destroy the world.
August’s father had taught him the language as a child, and he loved how the words all flowed like a gentle stream over smooth stones.
But that one stuck out. He’d see it in sad poems and stories about grief and loss, and it always seemed to encapsulate the sensation so well that he could feel it deep in his bones.
He’d stocked it away in his memory, sure it was the perfect word, and when his father died, it had felt right.
But the reality was, it was meaningless.
It was nothing. There were no words in any language that could capture this grief.
The sharp edges of it carved through August, hacking and slicing until he was sure only tattered shreds of his heart remained.
He hoped that maybe the Jivanten people were onto something, and that his grief would destroy the world, because if Lottie was gone, what did it matter?
Hot tears streamed down his face, the pool of blood—Lottie’s blood—soaking the fabric of his trousers as the crowd’s shouting faded into background noise.
This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.
He stared down into Lottie’s empty eyes as dark cracks spread around him, fracturing the shimmering air.
How could he exist without her?
Don’t leave me. Please stay. Please.
She was all he had.
He looked up through the creeping darkness of his shattering world to find Felix watching with eyes that glinted like knives. A grim shadow of the boy August had thought he was.
This was Felix’s fault. All of it.
The clawing in his chest twisted and writhed, morphing into something unrecognizable.
August couldn’t let him walk away. Not after what he’d done. He snatched Lottie’s dagger from the ground, Felix’s blood still slick on the blade, and forced himself up.
Felix raised the gun. When he spoke, his words were ice. “You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me.”
August barely registered the shot over the roaring in his ears. He hardly felt the bullet at all, though the impact knocked him back a step.
For one suspended heartbeat, the world slammed to a stop, shock freezing him in place. Then everything erupted. Pain and grief and fury ripped through him in a single breath.
August came apart—a raw, jagged sob tearing from his chest as the fractured fabric of the veil shattered with him.
The world collapsed in on itself until nothing remained but the silver-stained gloom of the Hollow Dark.